AI Innovation & Startup Growth with Nikos Patsis | Ep 264 | DevReady Podcast

·37 min·1 clip

When we secured Series A funding, we felt top of the world. But nobody tells you that the actual problems begin then.

Anthony hosts Nikos Patsis, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor with elite technical pedigree, on the DevReady Podcast. Nikos shares his journey from engineering studies at the top school in Greece through a Harvard PhD in financial engineering focusing on exotic options pricing. He worked at a private equity fund in New York and spent three years in Bermuda before pivoting to entrepreneurship. His first startup was a mobile value added services provider based in Guatemala that successfully expanded across Central America and was sold to a competitor. His second company, VoiceWeb, was a pioneering conversational AI company in Greece focused on automating customer care for enterprises. He was an early pioneer in voice bots and chatbots—so early that customers didn't understand the value proposition and feared job losses. Greece's decade-long financial crisis forced expansion into Balkans, Turkey, Middle East, and Africa, eventually serving 30+ countries with high-quality customers like Vodafone, Raiffeisen Bank, and MTN Group. He successfully exited VoiceWeb three years prior and now invests and mentors. Nikos stresses that Series A funding, while seemingly triumphant, introduces hidden challenges no one warns founders about, and emphasizes his desire to help younger founders avoid mistakes he made.

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